12 Comments
Jul 21, 2023Liked by Antonio Melonio

Some good points made, but suggesting we should just abolish capitalism is the kind of unrealistic proposal that cancels out the good points. We need real world thinking not pie in the sky wishes.

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My man, capitalism will abolish itself soon enough.

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Nice hot take, but what does that even mean? What does it even mean to abolish capitalism? What do you replace it with? You do realize it is just a word that describes an economic model/theory not a defined program?

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Perhaps in the age of monarchies, democracy was such a wish?

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Can we start by outlawing legal firms and big pharma from advertising again?

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Jul 21, 2023Liked by Antonio Melonio

I could not be more on board.

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Aug 1, 2023Liked by Antonio Melonio

Well written piece, I enjoyed reading it. These days, there's another dimension to the ads, influencers. If they are good, the persuasive qualities can be pretty strong compared to traditional ads on the web for example. Not sure how big that market is, but companies are betting heavily on it that's for certain.

As you point out to some extent we have the power as consumers, however it's troubling that the companies produce goods that are by design not living up to the quality standards they could do, nudging us into replacements earlier than necessary.

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Great piece! I love having (finally) come across someone articulating a point that I've been making myself for many years now. Coming to the conclusion that advertising is obsolete was one of the main reasons that I sold the business that I had built from 2000-2015 and embarked upon an entirely different path of life thereafter. I've written about this both in standalone pieces

https://bowendwelle.substack.com/p/advertising-is-obsolete

...as well as in chapters of my memoir, which is serialized here in Substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/bowendwelle/p/12-wired-tired-fired

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"The Space Merchants" https://search.worldcat.org/title/1122897 becomes depressingly more and more reality.

One of the most memorable moments for me was when the main character comes across an old book, and finds its lack of ads obscene.

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"A quick and easy internet search can provide us with all the information we might require about a particular product."

This article brought to you by your favorite search engine owners looking to become the sole source of information and control the remaining part of your life not already under their control.

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Feb 21, 2023Liked by Antonio Melonio

There exist specialized site searches. For example, one can search Wikiepdia, Reddit, and PubMed directly without directly using a major search engine.

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Ah yes! Forgot to link them in the sources, thanks!

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